The Mrs Lowry in question is the mother of L.S, him that painted matchstalk men and matchstalk cat and dogs. It's 1934, he was a devoted son to a bedridden, joyless, viciously snobbish mother who was constantly putting him and his art down, blaming his late father for having to move out of their middle-class home and live in a back-to-back two up two down in Salford with the proletariat. He's had to put up with this all his life; you only have to do 90 minutes.

Mrs Lowry should have put her son on the stage. Over 80% of it is set in her bedroom (it was originally a radio play) and on the boards, Redgrave and Spall would have had audiences lapping up this sub-Alan Bennett tripe. On the big screen these characters are too small, their emotional range too meagre. By the end, I had become vaguely contemptuous of Spall's wan smile of beaten-dog forbearance.